As a Polish guy - I would not trust a single thing shown in the national propagandist TVP television.
It's really weird to see this on Hacker News.
It's really weird to see this on Hacker News.
Also, highly recommend "The Last Of The Just" by André Schwarz-Bart. It is soo good that there is nothing else for me to say than to just read it. I've read it once Chomsky stated in one of his interviews that it was one of the best (if not best) books written on Jewish history.
As for Russia-US symmetrism - it's bullshit.
Soviets did mass ethnic cleansing in 20th century to the level that USA only ever aproached during the conquest of the wild west.
And Russia had its own wild east - which was conquered just as brutally as the American wild west and which is still ruled with iron fist. Where Americans eventually recognized Indians as a minority with special rights - Soviets are still sending their Indians in thousands to die in their colonial wars.
Just let yourself think about what his counterparts in US were saying. That Russia would collapse and Putin's oppresionist government is going to be overthrown by protestors? Don't you see that what we get is Putin's approval rating a historic high?
And nobody in US wants to be seen as "weak on Russia".
Only now there is more people who start saying clearly that the war is not going to stop, it is going to last number of years, and impratant bit, Ukraine is going to be completely destroyed in the process. And what Ukrainian people are going to get in return? EU membership? Western valus? Freedom?
Once you get this, the whole narrative people like Chomsky are proposing, that in 2004 this, in 2008 that, can be seen in a new light. You can read "The Art of Diplomacy" by Francois de Callieres, about 17th century european politics, which is talking about how to do international relations. Really helpful to see that this situation in Ukraine is not new - in other words, what is happening now could be forseen before the war broke out.
ps. I know quite a few Ukrainians very well who escaped the war, many from the demolished easter cities. And it didn't even cross my mind to tell them that I oppose anything Ukraine is doing atm.
> Just let yourself think about what his counterparts in US were saying
Timothy Snyder for example? He's saying that Ukraine should be admited to NATO and EU, and that Russia needs to lose this war. What's wrong with that?
> Only now there is more people who start saying clearly that the war is not going to stop
All wars stop.
> Ukraine is going to be completely destroyed in the process
Already is. If you let Russia settle for peace on their conditions - they will rebuild and invade Ukraine again. Like they already did 2 times. So it's better to deal with that now than to give them more time to harm Ukraine.
> "The Art of Diplomacy" by Francois de Callieres, about 17th century european politics, which is talking about how to do international relations
There were no nukes, NATO, EU, UN. No relevance whatsoever.
This isn't the only time that this war could have been averted.
I also believe this war is partly because of the worlds weak response to the initial 2014 invasion, if the response to that was stronger then I think there was a decent chance the 2022 invasion would of never happened.
How many times can you be wrong before you realize your assumptions are wrong?
Chomsky is literally an anarchist.
But it's ok, because it's a dictatorship far away. Other people will be opressed.
Are these things not worth fighting for?. If you don't fight for your freedom then what would you fight for?.
Fucking tankies man..
The Wikimedia Foundation itself is not, but there are absolutely cliques of editors pushing propaganda.
Sienkiewicz himself went to the US in 1876 and spent two years there, which had an influence on his writing.
Overall his works purposefully had a "feel-good" narrative since Poland wasn't an independent state at the time, losing the status in the late 18th century.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Telewizja_Polska#Controversies
Edit: this is not TVP History, but the point stands.
However, TVP World (an branch of TVP publishing in English) is actually not too bad. It's still biased but not dumbed-down, I would say.
Obviously not, but there's no general factor of wrongness lurking behind it. HN has a crippling case of engineer's syndrome, but why should that have anything to do with Polish nationalism?